


10 Things The Lieutenants Do, After

by QueSeraAwesome



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Spoilers for Episode 12 of Season 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-07-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 00:59:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2047098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueSeraAwesome/pseuds/QueSeraAwesome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They should be used to death by now, to grief. This shouldn't be anything new to them, not this many years into the War. <br/>It shouldn't hurt this much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	10 Things The Lieutenants Do, After

**Author's Note:**

> Triggers for: Grief, discussion of death, implications of suicidal intent, a character throws up at one point and general sadness.

1.

The first thing Lt. Smith does when he gets the news, is to look to the others. Because this is the worst thing he could have imagined, this will rock them, this could break them, and the thing about being very tall and very large is people expect you to be strong.

Bitters sways on his feet, like he’s been hit, and for a minute Smith thinks he’s actually going to fall, but of course he doesn’t (because he’s Bitters, after all) and rocks forward fingers curling into fists and curses falling out of him; Palomo turns away, shifts his feet like he needs to know the ground is still there, and Jensen—

Jensen’s spine folds in on itself. She takes a shaky half step towards him and he meets her halfway, their arms folding around each other. This. This he can do. She cries into the nape of his neck, fingers sharp points of connection, gripping hard in grief, and it takes Smith a very long time to realize that he’s holding her just as tightly, how much he needs this too.

 

2.

Bitters stumbles away. He’s shaking. Everything’s shaking. He’s swearing, he’s not sure what he’s saying, curses just kind of happen at this point. They curl up from his gut, from where it hurts, and he tastes bile in the back of his throat, or maybe blood, and god, his stupid fat Captain and—

no, he can’t think about him, he can’t start that, think about anything else, think about—

maybeifIdidn’tfuckupduringtraininghewouldhavetakenmewithhimmaybeIcould’ve—

no—

don’tthinkdon’tthink—

He only barely gets his helmet off in time to vomit into the grass.

 

3.

He doesn’t like people to see him crying. And he shouldn’t be crying, he only knew the guy a little while. Most of which he spent yelling at him.

But the first thing Palomo does when he hears the news that Captain Tucker is dead, is turn away, cover his face. Because he’s going to fucking cry like a fucking chump, and he doesn’t want anyone to see him.

He forgets he’s wearing a helmet. It doesn’t seem like enough protection from the reality of the world getting in anymore.

 

4.

It’s stupid, really. She knows that. But she goes and finds all the old raw footage from that day they trained with Felix. Yeah, it’s just the Captains getting their butts kicked a lot, but it’s the only images they have of them. She wants to remember. She stays up all night, cutting together the material, taking special care to give each Captain equal time, not just featuring _her_ captain. It wouldn't be fair. Some things should be fair.

She can’t fight so good, can’t write any sad poems, won’t be able to do a speech if they do any kind of memorial to their fallen hope. So she makes a tribute video instead, even if she’s not sure she could ever show anyone. It’s stupid.

 

5\. 

"You know what keeps me from falling apart?” Smith asks. “Captain Caboose wouldn’t want me to be sad. And at least he’s with the people he lost, now. He’d tell me about them, sometimes. I’m sure he’s with them, wherever he is now.”

“…Does that really help?”

“Sort of,” Smith admits, after a long minute. “I think if I just keep saying it, it will.”

 

6.

“You know,” Palomo says quietly as he and Bitters lean against the same wall and pointedly avoid each other’s gaze. “I don’t even think Captain Tucker would want me at his funeral.”

 

7\. “Should we do something about him?” Jensen asks.

They watch Bitters stalk away across the lawn, shoulders tense and stride tenser. He’d barely said three words to them before making an excuse and turning away. He doesn’t talk much anymore. Except for profanity.

“We all grieve in our own way,” Smith says.

“Yeah, well his way fucking sucks,” Palomo says, poking at the bruise across his cheek. “All I did was ask how Mathews was.”

 

8 .

“It shouldn’t hurt this bad,” Jensen says. She takes her helmet off, jabs at her eyes with a bit of Kleenex. “We’ve lost lots of people. At this point, we all have. It doesn’t seem real, that there was a time when almost everyone I knew wasn’t dead. So it shouldn’t hurt this bad.”

Palomo bumps her shoulder awkwardly.

“But it does,” he says. “At least your Captain liked you.”

 

9.

“We’re fucked,” Bitters says. “You all know that, right? We’re all gonna fucking die without them— and I don’t even care anymore!”

“Don’t say that!” Jensen retorts.

“They were the last shred of hope any of us had,” Bitters continues, “And they weren’t even a good shred in the first place! Now what?”

“Don’t talk like that man,” Palomo says. “We don’t need that right now. Cut it out!”

“I wanna go first,” Bitters says. “I’m sick of everyone I know dying but me—“

“Shut up!”

“—So if we’re out there and somebody’s got to take a grenade I call fucking dibs, don’t any of you guys cheat me, I’m not doing this shit again, no way, I’d rather—“

“ _Stop it!_ ”

Jensen throws off Smith’s comforting arm, stalks right up to him and Bitters knows she’s going to hit him. He knows. He knows when people are going to hit him by now.

But she doesn’t. She walks right into him, an impact, throwing her arms over his shoulders— no, she’s got a hand wrapped around the back of his neck, pulling it down to smoosh his face against her shoulder. He tries to push her away but she’s always been deceptively strong.

“Don’t say that,” she hisses at him, the words more aggressive than her breaking voice. “Don’t say that, please, Bitters. Please.”

She doesn’t let him go until he agrees. He’ll never admit how badly he shook in her arms; he’ll never admit there was moisture left on her shoulder when they finally let each other go.

 

10\. “You know,” Palomo says. “Someone has to kill Locus sometime.”

The other three lieutenants turn to look at him.

“He can't be lucky all the time. War’s luck and skill, and his luck can’t hold out forever. And when it does. I really, _really_ hope it’s one of us on the other end.”

**Author's Note:**

> QueSeraAwesome.tumblr.com
> 
> ^look that's me


End file.
